Daughter of the Sword

by Jeanne Williams

  Conrad’s gift was a leather-bound handmade book of poetry and selections from authors they’d shared that winter: Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Boehme, Heine, Rückert, Goethe, Morike—Whitman?

  Conrad had copied from Leaves of Grass:

  “And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut

  hair of graves,

  It may be you are from old people, or from

  offspring taken soon from their mother’s laps,

  And here you are the mothers’ laps.”

  She looked at Conrad. “Thank you,” she said. “I can read it now.”

  He nodded. Ansjie, excitedly, had opened the bedroom door. “Come!” she called. “Look at your present from the villagers!”

  “The villagers! Why, they didn’t need to—”

  “They wished, much, to thank you for teaching their children.” Ansjie was almost dancing on tiptoes as Deborah stared at the beautiful chest standing on carved legs and worked with vines and flowers, polished to a rich sheen. “Open it!”

  “Oh, it’s too much! I can’t take it!”

  “Will you offend Peter Voth, who made it, and the people who paid him their share in produce or labor?” Conrad’s voice was stern. “The Friedentalers took great pleasure in planning this. Will you cheat them of their gift?”

  Put that way, what could she do?

  “Open it!” Ansjie cried again.

  Deborah hesitantly lifted the lid. The chest was full: snowy linens, embroidered pillowcases, quilts, down pillows, a blue featherbed that seemed to swell as articles were lifted off it, smelling of rose leaves—lovely, useful things, enough to start housekeeping.

  In a way, it held a dream. One she couldn’t dream yet. She suspected that the Landers had contributed heavily to the contents but knew it was useless to protest. Smoothing down the bright quilts, she closed the chest, blinking back tears.

  “It’s a wonderful present—a lifetime present.”

  “Don’t sound as if you had to carry it!” Conrad laughed. “It’ll wait, sweet with roses, till you’re ready for it.” His eyes touched her till she couldn’t look at him. “And one day you will be.”

  That seemed far away. But possessing some home furnishings again made her strangely happy, even though she had no bed on which to put pillows and quilts, no table for cloths and napkins. Before she went to bed that night, she picked up Dane’s sketch pad, placed it on the chest.

  Would he someday sleep on those sheets, rest on the soft down? When would the snow melt? When would he come?

  It was Johnny who came at the end of May, just as she was deciding that she couldn’t stay at Friedental much longer, from hope of Dane or fear of Rolf. The children were working all day now in the gardens and fields, so school was out till after the harvest, and though she helped Ansjie in the garden and house, she wasn’t really needed.

  If Rolf was still in the Territory, she couldn’t hide forever, and surely he realized now that he couldn’t force her to marry him.

  Friedental had been a saving respite, but her real life lay out where the striving, changing shaping of a free state was taking place. Her family had come for that. She was the only one left.

  Johnny’s news, given after reporting that Sara and Judith were fine, increased that feeling. Indignation over the Doy “train’s” arrest and jailing was still high. Doy had been tried March 24 in St. Joseph, but the jury couldn’t agree and he faced a new trial. The Republicans had held a convention at Osawatomie May 18, one day short of the first anniversary of the massacre at Marais des Cygnes, and close enough to the May 21, 1856, sack of Lawrence by pro-slavers and the retaliatory May 25 date of John Brown’s bloody work at Pottawatomie to call both to mind. Abraham Lincoln had been invited but couldn’t come because of his law practice.

  “Had a problem, the bigwigs did.” Johnny grinned, accepting Ansjie’s second servings of mixed sausages, sauerkraut, tasty salad of potatoes, ham, pickles, eggs, green onions, and sour cream. “Horace Greeley offered to speak and they didn’t know what to do with him!”

  “The editor of the New York Tribune?” breathed Deborah.

  “Guess that’s it” Except for Josiah Whitlaw and Dan Anthony of Leavenworth, Johnny considered newspapermen a scurvy lot. “The Republicans wanted to rope in people who weren’t necessarily red-eyed about slavery, and they figgered a New York radical was bound to say some things that’d make ’em sound pure-dee abolitionist. On the other hand, they sure didn’t want to make Greeley and his eastern friends mad.”

  “How’d they handle it?” Conrad asked interestedly.

  “Pretty slick. Honored him with a big parade. Marchers had Tribunes in their hats. Then he was asked to address an open-air meeting. There were a thousand delegates. No room in the boardinghouses, so they slept by their rigs or in the groves. Greeley felt properly honored, but he was kept put of the real organizin’ where things got down to brass tacks.”

  “And what were the brass tacks?” prodded Deborah.

  Johnny rubbed his beard, which looked as if it had been pruned considerably. In fact, instead of resembling a grizzled old buffalo, he looked thinner, younger, and if not handsome, distinguished. “Well, you know the Free State party kind of fell apart during the tug of war between Lane and Robinson, especially after Lane killed Jenkins last June. Lane pretty much organized the Osawatomie show, but Free Staters see they have to quit squabblin’ and stick together, so even though apportionment of delegates gave Lane’s radicals the edge over Robinson’s conservatives, about the same number turned up from each side.”

  Conrad shook his head. “American politics,” he murmured, “are—different! The Herrenhaus was never like this!”

  “What’s that?” demanded Johnny.

  “The upper house of the Prussian parliament. Rather like the British House of Lords. Its members represent the large estates, big cities, or are nominated by the king as hereditary members.”

  “Don’t the people elect anybody?”

  Conrad shrugged. “The lower house is elected by tax-paying citizens, but it’s split into three groups according to the amount of taxes paid by the electors. So those who pay most have the largest voice.”

  “We sure wouldn’t like that here!” bristled Johnny. “My vote’s just as good as … as …”—he tried to think of someone rich, then brightened as he succeeded—“… as Russell’s, Major’s, or Waddell’s. They’ve got rich on freightin’, but their vote’s just like mine!”

  “Except when the Missourians came across the line and voted ten or twenty times apiece,” Deborah reminded him.

  He turned red at that. “Cesli tatanka! Well, them days are done! By the way, Russell’s joined a Missourian to start an outfit called the Leavenworth and Pike’s Peak Express Company. Began service May 17. Should do real well if the gold boom keeps up.” He spat. “Seems like every man and his jackass is headin’ for Denver!”

  Deborah’s heart skipped a beat. “Even Rolf Hunter?”

  “No, more’s the pity. Hear tell he’s hangin’ out with a wild bunch around Westport.” Johnny sighed. “Best you stay here a little longer, honey. He’s still lookin’ for you. Has come by the smithy twice, and I hear he’s offered a reward for anyone who can tell him where you are.”

  Fear chilled Deborah for a moment, only to be overwhelmed by anger. “I can’t hide forever!”

  Johnny’s eyes narrowed. “No, you can’t. But Dane should be back in a month or so. I’d like to give him a chance to handle his brother. If he don’t—well, when you come live with us, I’ll skin that young varmint if he comes prowlin’ around.”

  As she tardily realized that moving back to the smithy could cause trouble for her friends, that it wasn’t just a matter of personal risk, Deborah had no choice but to stifle her protests, though she was determined not to stay in hiding much longer. Swallowing her frustration, she asked what else had happened at the convention.

  “Hin!” pondered Johnny. “They allowed as how the Declaration of Independence was the
bedrock of proper government, bad-mouthed the Dred Scott decision because it gutted the Missouri Compromise, came out for a railroad clear to the Pacific, free homesteads, better harbors, and they asked the Wyandotte convention, which is supposed to meet July 5, to prohibit slavery in the new state constitution.”

  “Let’s hope this one finally gets us into the Union,” Deborah said rather bitterly. “Let’s see, now—isn’t this the fourth constitution?”

  “Free-Staters drew up the Topeka Constitution, but the federal government was pro-slave and said it wasn’t legal,” mused Johnny, counting fingers. “The Lecompton Constitution that President Buchanan tried to get Kansans to accept was brewed up by slavers. The Leavenworth Constitution provided for a free state, but it wasn’t approved by Congress.” He blew out his cheeks. “I think they’ll approve whatever comes out of Wyandotte, though. Buchanan knows now that Kansas is free-state to the backbone, and there’s nothin’ he can do about it.”

  “A long struggle,” said Conrad.

  “It’s been that.” Johnny looked at Deborah. “Hadn’t been for folks comin’ in to make it go free, the Missourians would’ve seen that it was admitted as a slave state. Now that can’t happen.”

  Deborah hastened to make it clear that most territorial settlers weren’t New England abolitionists. “You could say the New England Emigrant Aid Society’s pioneers kept a foot in the door for Free Staters, but what’s really made the difference has been the flood of people from Iowa and Ohio. They came for land, but most were against slavery just because it wasn’t part of what they were used to.”

  Johnny nodded. “What’s sure now is that Kansas will go in free. Just in time, I’d reckon, to help fight a war!”

  “You think it’ll come to that?” frowned Conrad.

  “Bound to unless the South is allowed to make up its own rules. All the hotheads aren’t goin’ west to look for gold, though it seems mighty like it. That’s the main reason I rode over.”

  To the puzzled looks turned toward him, Johnny said, “Goin’ to be mobs of gold-hunters passin’ the smithy this summer, along with the usual settlers’ wagons. Won’t be very safe for an underground railroad station till fall, and without the Whitlaws’ place, there’s no station west of Lawrence till Topeka.”

  Ansjie’s eyes widened. Conrad was impassive. “You think we might help runaways. Ansjie and I would, but this concerns the whole community. I’ll go around tonight and explain to each family. Then we can have a meeting and vote tomorrow morning.” He smiled. “It’ll be a short meeting. The men will want to get to their fields.”

  It was short. Twenty minutes after the men had assembled in the church, Elder Goerz led them out. They scattered to their work, except for the elder, who accompanied Conrad to where Johnny waited by the village well with Deborah and Ansjie.

  Sturdy, sun-browned legs showing below trousers that reached just below the knee, with feet thrust into sandals and a wide-brimmed black hat shading his whiskered face, the Mennonite elder from Prussia looked at the buffalo-hunter-blacksmith from the frontier.

  “All have talked with their wives,” he said in careful English. “All have prayed. All say yes, it is God’s will that we shelter the oppressed.”

  Johnny gripped his hand so hard that the elder, no weakling himself, flinched. “Thank you, friend! From now on, folks from Friedental get their smithin’ at half-charge!”

  The elder shook his head. “Besser we pay,” he said austerely. “We do this for God. He has brought us to a land where we can be free. Shall we not help those who also wish freedom?”

  With a word to Ansjie and Deborah, he went to his field. Conrad dropped a hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “It took only five minutes to vote.” He laughed. “The other fifteen minutes was for praying!”

  “Tatanka wakan!” gasped Johnny. “Now, wouldn’t it be something if our legislators did that?”

  June ripened along with wheat and corn. When Conrad went to reap, Deborah asked to be allowed to bind. “But that’s such hot, dirty work!” protested Ansjie. “Conrad always hires one or two boys.”

  “But I’d like to do it.” Deborah tried to answer Ansjie’s baffled stare. “Last year we had our first wheat. Thos and I were so proud!” She gave a shaky little laugh. “And we were so glad that we’d have wheat flour instead of cornmeal all the time!”

  What would cornmeal matter if her family was back? But working in the wheat would be a link with what endured when reapers changed.

  “Of course you may bind if you wish,” said Conrad. “And it’s likely your old wheat field has a new crop, sown from dropped grain. Would you want to go and see?”

  Deborah stiffened. She hadn’t been back to her home since Rolf took her away that night five months ago. But Thos’s child would inherit it, which gave it a future, not just a tragic past, and if there were wheat, sowed from that reaped by her brother, she didn’t want it to go to waste.

  “Could we take a scythe or cradle?” she asked. “If there’s a fair crop, after your share’s taken out, it can be threshed with Johnny’s, sold if it’s not needed, and maybe Johnny could buy the baby a few cows or use the money for expenses.”

  “That baby’s not going to lack for people who care about it” Conrad grinned. “But my share of the reaping will be your satisfaction. Shall we harvest the baby’s field first?”

  Deborah shook her head. “We know you have a crop.” She smiled. “Let’s get that in first!”

  Ansjie helped, of course, though she grumbled that in Prussia only peasants did such work, or madmen like Conrad. “So?” he chuckled, pausing, white shirt open at the throat. “Are we in Prussia, then?”

  He went back to swinging the cradle. Ansjie, signing, moved her shoulders to ease tired muscles, but she resumed her work. It reminded Deborah inescapably of the harvest last year, how Dane had helped. On the last day of the harvest, they’d ridden to the river—

  A year ago. Blinking back tears, she added a bundle of grain to the shock. When was he coming?

  Was he?

  They harvested the Landers’ field in four days. Conrad proposed to leave the next day for the Whitlaws’, taking food and bedrolls so they could camp out the three or four nights they’d be gone. Conrad figured to strike due east rather than go the long way around by Johnny’s. Cross-country, he thought it was about fifteen miles.

  “Fifteen miles?” wailed Ansjie. “On horseback? Never! I’m still sore from bending over!”

  “I’m sorry!” said Deborah contritely.

  Ansjie shrugged. “I was the fool—no one made me do it! But I’m not fool enough to jog all day over the prairie and then do more of this back-breaking work!”

  “But Deborah needs a chaperone,” worried Conrad.

  “You won’t get any of these hausfrauen to gallop with you,” Ansjie predicted. “But one of the girls might. What about Cobie Balzer?”

  Boyish, leggy Cobie was elated at the prospect, and Conrad reluctantly agreed that what he paid her parents would be deducted from the crop. The three would-be harvesters left Friedental at dawn. Conrad’s cradle was wrapped with bedding and fastened behind his saddle. Cobie rode Ansjie’s neat sorrel mare and kept stroking her mane, crooning to her ecstatically.

  “Hansi Goerz’s jealous because I got to come instead of him!” she crowed with a toss of her yellow pigtails. “So I’ll bind better than he could! You won’t be sorry you picked me!”

  “I’m sure we won’t.” Deborah laughed.

  Even apart from propriety, she was glad the girl was with them. She had shrunk from visiting her home, though she felt it was time she did, time she accepted it as it was now.

  Reaping the wheat would be both farewell and promise to Thos. And having a frolicsome youngster about would exorcise the haunted mood that might otherwise taint the pilgrimage. It was good to return like this, to harvest the fruit of her twin’s labor for the child born of his seed.

  Yet in the early afternoon when they struck the almost grown-over trai
l from the smithy and the country grew familiar, Deborah’s nerves tautened. A sickness began in the pit of her stomach, then increased till she was shivering in spite of the warm, bright day.

  There was the Osage orange hedge she and Thos had planted around the field to keep the horses and poor Venus out. The wheat was high inside, as high almost as if it had been planted.

  Unwillingly, her gaze moved to the stable, the walls still standing, though half the roof was gone. There was the well-house.

  And the cabin.

  Charred logs, the fireplace seeming to wait, puzzled at its exposure to the elements. The debris was gone. She suspected that Johnny had finished burning it and cleaned away the remnants. Climbing down from Chica, she stared at the fireplace.

  How many meals had been cooked there! How often the family had sat near the warmth and read or talked. Her eyes stung. She moved blindly toward the stable.

  The earth where she’d buried her parents and from which they’d been moved had been carefully smoothed over. They were buried in the cemetery on the slope west of town and someday she’d have to go there, but to her this was their resting place.

  I love you! she cried to them through silence and death and time. Mother, Father, Thos! Please hear me! I love you. I always will!

  No answer. But the wheat waved golden in the sun.

  Turning to Conrad and the hushed young girl, she straightened her shoulders. “Let’s water the horses,” she said. “And then let’s start the harvest.”

  xviii

  They worked till sundown, Cobie and Deborah following Conrad’s steady swings of the cradle that left the grain pointing in one direction for easier binding. After washing off as much dust and chaff as possible the three sat down to feast hungrily on sausage, cheese, crusty fresh bread, nut cake, and molasses cookies, all washed down with water from the well.

  Deborah had drawn it up, though she’d had to combat memories of the last time she’d done that, getting rid of strangled chickens before she could wash her parents. Using familiar things was, she felt instinctively, the only way to cleanse them of that last horror. She’d wept sometimes that afternoon, but with a sense of relief, of healing.